What planes have the worst safety records?
Designs that show signs of a possible lack of safety tend not to remain in production. The first De Havilland Comets had problems with stress fatigue and exploded violently after a certain number of cycles in the air when their cabin structures broke. Later models had this problem fixed, but the Comet line never recovered commercially from those first problems. The V-tailed Bonanzas had a poor record, the V-shaped tail being less forgiving of pilot error than other designs (although it wasn’t fundamentally unsafe). The military F-111 had a bad reputation for a time, and the USAF no longer flies it, although at least one other air force (in Australia) still has them in service. It was an advanced aircraft that had a lot of early problems. Some small general-aviation aircraft from Cirrus have poor safety records. This is mainly because the aircraft is aggressively marketed to new pilots with little experience and lots of money, including a very strong emphasis on the parachute system (ev
